On Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene took to X to add to the many conspiracy theories surrounding Biden’s exit from the presidential race. Greene attributed the ascendance of Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee after Biden’s decision to step down to the same shadowy forces supposedly behind the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
“They tried to assassinate Donald Trump,” Greene posted. “Joe Biden is rumored to have had a medical event … and is no where to be seen. Now they have propped up Kamala Harris without any Democrat voters casting a single vote. What is going on??? Who is doing this??? Who is running the country???”
Greene’s conspiracy theorizing adds to what The New York Times called “a torrent of falsehoods and misleading posts by right-wing influencers that have spread since Mr. Biden’s announcement.” In Greene’s post, the pronoun “they” works not unlike the red string on a conspiracy board, connecting Harris’s rise and the Trump shooting.
Others in the MAGA world are drawing similar connections. On Monday evening, Tucker Carlson captioned an interview with far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec: “The assassination failed, so they took out Biden.” Another right-wing X user posted that a “soft coup by Kamala Harris & the Democratic Elite” was to be expected “after they prosecuted [Trump] on bogus charges & likely tried to assassinate him.”
These remarks represent a development in the initial conspiratorial rhetoric that emerged following the attempt on Trump’s life. Then, right-wing figures like Cory Mills, Ben Carson, and, of course, Hulk Hogan attributed the shooting to a shadowy “they,” rather than the 20-year-old would-be assassin whose motives remain rather turbid.
As Axios reported earlier this month, when Trump supporters invoke this ambiguous “they,” they are conjuring “a composite of real but distinct controversies,” encompassing those “responsible for Trump’s convictions in New York, his federal indictments, his multimillion-dollar fines in civil lawsuits, record illegal border crossings,” and the assassination attempt. Such rhetoric serves to reinforce an image of Trump that’s popular among his supporters, as “a victim who’s seeking retribution.”
Around that time, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump observed that such ambiguous language posits a “broad, nebulous galaxy of opponents” persecuting Trump and his allies. Greene’s comments suggest this galaxy is still expanding.
